He stared at her dubiously, then shrugged and tossed her credits back on the desk as the stable boy led Suki back into view. "No skin off my nose. The kid hasn't untacked-”
"She won't be needing that," Drake cut in. He reached down to grab Ashlyn's wrist as she picked up the credits, and she dropped them like they were on fire, cheeks flaming as she snatched her hand away.
"She'll be picking the horse up in the morning to move to my stable," Skye added, placing a hand on Ashlyn’s shoulder.
"The hell I will!" Ashlyn snapped, trying to shrug off his hand. It didn't work. She glared at Drake. "Give me those credits."
"You can't go anywhere, Ashlyn," he said slowly, pushing the credits back over the desk to the other man. "Now that we know you're alive, we can overthrow Devlyn and establish you as the rightful leader of Toryn."
"Oh yeah, it'll really be that easy," she retorted. "Maybe he'll just step down when he realizes that stealing my shuriken didn't actually kill me. I can tell when I’m not wanted. Aaron made it pretty darn clear.”
"Don't be stupid, Ash. Aaron didn't mean what he told you," Skye said from her other side. "We're all glad you're alive. He just didn't know how to respond."
"I guess a simple 'welcome back' was too much to ask," Ashlyn answered sarcastically. "Thanks, Skye, but no thanks. I'm not going to stick around for another verbal lashing at the hands of that jerk."
"You can't leave," Drake said, more firmly this time. "If Devlyn finds out you're alive-“
"And with us," Skye added.
"- He'll do everything he can to kill you. You have to stay with us, Ashlyn. There's no other way."
Ashlyn gritted her teeth. "I've been on my own for twenty-three years," she told them angrily. "Eight years ago, you spent a few weeks tolerating my presence and ignoring everything I said, and then you forgot I even existed as soon as you didn't need me anymore. You do not have the right to tell me what I can do with my life. Now let go of me!"
She jerked away from Skye and snatched Suki's reins away from the stable boy. No sooner had she put her foot in the stirrup than she was suddenly grabbed from behind. Strong arms wrapped around her and pulled her back.
"I had hoped we wouldn't have to resort to this," Drake said, calmly deflecting her well-aimed kicks as he pinned her arms to her sides.
"Ew! Let go of me, you freak!" Ashlyn yelled. "Skye! Help me!"
"Keep the horse for the night," Skye said to the stable boy. "Ashlyn won’t be needing it." Turning grim-faced to Drake, he motioned for the other man to follow him, and they strode out into the rain, Ashlyn still screaming her head off.
"You...jerk!" she spat at Drake, struggling uselessly in his arms. "Let go of me, you lying, two-faced creep! You're- ow- you're hurting me!"
"Stop fighting," he replied, unfazed.
"Ashlyn, this is for your own good," Skye said. He pushed open the door to a nondescript, blue-shingled house and stood aside for Drake to pass.
"Like hell it is!" She threw her head back, trying to loose Drake's grip, and immediately saw stars as the back of her skull connected with the doorjamb. "Ohhh..."
"Great," said Skye, a trace of irritability in his tone. "She'll be real easy to handle with a concussion."
"Would you prefer to carry her yourself?" Drake replied.
Ashlyn stopped struggling for a few moments, attempting to ignore the pain assaulting her senses and processing Drake's easy response to Skye's words. The Drake Lockhart she remembered wouldn't have said three words unless you forcibly dragged them from him, much less utter a sarcastic response.
"Where are you taking me?" she muttered, prying a hand loose of Drake's grip to rub her aching head.
Drake kicked open a door and set her down none too gently on the hardwood floor. "Your room," he said.
Ashlyn looked around. Tacky wallpaper, vase of wildflowers, a single bed with a faded patchwork quilt and plain white sheets. All the comforts of prison.
"I'm not staying here," she announced. "You guys can lock me in or whatever, but I won't be here in the morning."
Skye and Drake exchanged a glance.
"Well, I guess we could always chain you to Vargo for the night," Skye said after a moment.
Ashlyn paled.
"He has been complaining about how far removed his room is from the rest of ours," the ex-DEMON continued. "It might do him good to have some company."
"Oh, right. Like you’re seriously going to handcuff me to that pervert. Please," scoffed Ashlyn. She hoped she sounded a lot more confident than she felt. Vargo was a wise-cracking, smart-ass Spartan with a penchant for pretty girls - and a creepy obsession with her. "Nobody would be that cruel!”
"I guess you could stay here," Skye said innocently, dropping her saddlebags on the floor. Ashlyn hadn't even noticed he was carrying them.
She glared at him. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
Skye sighed and leaned against the doorframe, folding his arms across his chest. Drake remained motionless beside him. Ashlyn resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at the silent gunslinger. Damn him and all of his vampiric super-strength.
"Look, I know it's a lot to lay on you in one night," Skye said, "but what you don't understand is that we've been fighting this battle without hope. It was enough for now to keep Devlyn and his army isolated on the island, but we had no chance of permanently defeating him without wiping out Toryn completely. You know your people, you know that they'll fight for what they believe in. Right now they believe that Devlyn is their leader, and they'll follow him to death, if that's what it takes. All we need to do is get you in there somehow, so you can do what you were born to do - take up leadership of Toryn and stop this meaningless war."
His aqua eyes were so heartbreakingly earnest during his little speech that Ashlyn couldn't stand to look at them any longer. She plopped down on the bed, staring at her feet.
"I know you want me to do this, Skye. I even know that it's what I should do. But it's just...too much to ask. You don't know that I'd be any better than Devlyn. I'm no different now than I was the last time you saw me. I'm not any smarter, or wiser, or more mature. I really don't think I'd be a very good leader for Toryn."
"We could assist you in training someone to take your place," Drake spoke up. "The important factor is not to force you into leadership, Ashlyn, but to ensure that Devlyn will no longer have the power to wage war. It is your right, if you do not wish to remain Lady of Toryn, to select your successor."
"You mean...take Devlyn out and then find someone else to lead Toryn?" Ashlyn said dubiously. "Couldn't you guys do that by yourselves?"
"Not without killing most of the Toryn army." Skye's tone was matter-of-fact.
Ashlyn scuffed the toe of her sneaker against the floor, thinking about the friends she didn't have in Toryn. Besides her father, the people in her hometown held little sentimental value for her, and the years she'd spent traveling had unraveled even those heartstrings. She could hardly recall her dad's face.
But she could remember the smell of wet sand on the beach, the feel of the Toryn wind whipping her hair, and the sheer face of the cliff on Na Michico. Standing at the edge of that cliff, staring down at the rocks below and wondering what it would be like to jump . . . oh yeah, she'd done that a few times. But each time she'd found something to live for. What did she have to live for this time?
She looked up and caught Drake's ruby gaze upon her, and a chill ran down her spine. None of them had anything to live for, really. But that in itself might be something to fight for anyway. The hope of finding something worthwhile.
"I'll stay here tonight," she surprised herself by saying. "Ask me again in the morning.”
Chapter 2
Planning a Duel
There were cracks in the ceiling paneling, threading through the artificial wood like cobwebs, or a length of intricate lace, or bare branches against a cloudy sky. In her years alone, Ashlyn had learned to find beauty even in the most unlikely of places, and to appr
eciate it while others may not have had the patience to notice in the first place.
It was still storming outside, and she could hear the rattle of the raindrops against the roof of the house. Every nerve ending in her body was crackling with the sound. It wasn't often that the free-spirited ninja was indoors while it rained, and being trapped inside the windowless room gave her the jittery sensation of being locked in a box.
She ran a hand down the wall next to her bed, tracing the uneven grain beneath the thin paper, feeling the rumble of thunder in the house's frame. It wasn’t quite sunrise yet, but she was wide awake, too restless to sleep for long. Each detail of the room was firmly locked into her mind now, every shadowed corner thoroughly explored, every speck of dust and its exact position memorized.
There was a trapdoor in her ceiling that led to a refurbished attic. The attic contained a single window overlooking the town square, but there were no lanterns lit. Ashlyn had been forced to wait for each lightning flash to catch even a glimpse of the outdoors.
The house was unnerving in its silence. She couldn’t hear any voices, no thumps, no creaking to let her know that the place was settling. She would have preferred for the others to let her know of their presence by making some sort of noise! Even in the matchbox lavatory attached to her bedroom, she couldn't hear anything - not even rattling pipes when she was taking her shower.
She sighed and glanced down at her saddlebags, spread over the bedcover and looking suspiciously ragged for the amount of credits that spilled out of her bulging drawstring purse. In her boredom she had decided to reorganize her belongings. But apparently she hadn’t learned any fabulous housekeeping traits in the nine months since she'd last reorganized, because Ashlyn had lost interest in the first five minutes. Ugh.
Her extra clothes (there weren't many, seeing as how she had to travel light) were neatly folded and repacked. The wet clothes she'd been wearing were hanging in the tiny closet in the corner, and the outfit she wore now was wrinkled but clean, at least. Until tonight Ashlyn hadn't noticed how tight her shirts had been getting, and how the hem of her shorts didn't even reach to mid-thigh. But since she'd seen Skye - and she'd always harbored something like a crush on the blond swordsman - Ashlyn had suddenly realized that she was still clad in the same childish tank tops and shorts that she had been wearing when she was sixteen. The only difference was that now the clothes were way too small for her.
Maybe she could borrow something from Restlyn, although Ashlyn doubted that even with her newfound curves she could fill out anything that belonged to the curvier Toryn.
Ashlyn shoved her tent kit off the bed with a toe. That freed up some space. There were also two hira shuriken, the weapons she had started fighting with after Devlyn had apparently stolen her favorite bo shuriken.
And then there were her stanes.
Ashlyn didn't consider herself materialistic at all. But stanes…well, they were another story entirely. The small, glowing stones harbored more magic than the most powerful shaman on Kresmir. Her small stane collection was her most valued possession, and she’d nearly killed herself to attain some of them - including the bright orange reveal stane she’d swiped off Skye when they’d parted ways eight years before.
Come to think of it, she was surprised he hadn't said anything to her during their conversation earlier. Not like he didn't know it was her. Who else would have been sneaky enough to steal something like that?
She slowly repacked the stanes, wrapping each gem in a tattered scrap of leather to keep them from clinking and revealing the bag's contents.
As she was pushing the bag underneath her bed, a soft knock sounded at the door.
"Come in," Ashlyn said, standing and turning towards the door.
Restlyn entered, looking much the same as she always did in jean shorts and a simple white shirt. She wasn't wearing the armband or her gloves…or shoes, Ashlyn realized, which gave the older girl an uncharacteristic air of innocence.
Details that she hadn't noticed the night before began to surface before Ashlyn's eyes. Restlyn's hair was much, much lighter now, riddled with honey-colored highlights. Instead of her usual braid, Restlyn wore a loose ponytail, with carefully arranged curls cascading down her back. It was strangely familiar, even similar to the style worn by…
Ashlyn sucked in a breath when she realized that Restlyn's hair was a startling re-creation of Jenn's, and her heart ached. There was no ring on the older woman's hand. Was Skye really still moping around over the dead Angel, when Restlyn was so clearly in love with him?
"Oh Restlyn," she groaned. "How could you?" As if the whole Toryn-at-war thing wasn't enough to deal with, now there was some kind of whacked identity crisis among her friends.
The other girl stopped, a crooked smile on her lips. "How could I what?"
"Your hair…" Ashlyn trailed off, raising a hand to finger the long strands framing Restlyn's face. "This isn't you. It was so gorgeous before."
Restlyn's laugh sounded forced, a fake twittering as she fought to cover the truth. "That's what I was going for, you know. Not me."
"Jenn would have hated it," Ashlyn said before she could stop herself.
Restlyn brushed Ashlyn's hand away. "Well, Jenn is dead, isn't she?" Her voice was smooth and biting, like vinegar over glass. "No one around here seems to remember that."
"I understand that better than you, apparently," Ashlyn retorted.
They stared at each other for a long moment, Ashlyn’s dark eyes boring into Restlyn’s burgundy ones. Finally Restlyn looked away.
"I don't want to talk about it," she said. "I came to get you for breakfast. You can come down to the kitchen if you want.'
She turned on her heel and walked out, brushing past Vargo, who was lurking in the doorway, looking scummy. As usual. When he was still working for Lord Angelo eight years ago, the red-haired Spartan had proved himself a formidable opponent, but his arrogant attitude and constant lewd remarks made it impossible for Ashlyn to think of him as anything but a total creep.
"Hey beautiful," he said, smirking.
Ashlyn dug her knuckles into her eyes. Could this get any worse?
Her stomach, always the pessimist, chose that moment to give a very loud and unmistakable rumble.
"Now that was attractive," said Vargo.
She dropped her hands and shook her head, irritated. "Shut up, jerk."
"Hey, no skin off my nose. I'm not the one who started a world war by taking leave from life for a while. I don't need all the friends I can get." He sauntered off, obviously pleased with his parting blows.
"Bite me," Ashlyn yelled, but he was already halfway down the stairs and out of insult range. Hadn't Skye said that Vargo's room was distanced away from everyone else's? Either Skye had lied - which was unlikely - or Vargo had deliberately gone out of his way to walk by her room - which was more than likely.
What a loser.
Scowling, Ashlyn stomped into the bathroom and braided her hair in front of the mirror, pulling it up to hide the length underneath her bandanna. She didn't want to give Vargo any excuse to notice that she was female…although her too-small shirt really didn't leave anything to the imagination. Weren't there any clothing stores in town? That might help.
She stared at herself in the mirror for a few moments before heading downstairs. She at least hadn't gotten her hair cut and styled to look like someone else, but nonetheless she looked totally different from the scruffy sixteen-year old her friends had last seen.
The steps didn't creak beneath her feet as she descended. That was probably why, in her post-near-concussion stupor, she hadn't noticed Drake carrying her upstairs.
It just figured, with her luck, that with a fifty-fifty chance of being carried by the guy she was crushing on (ahem…Skye), she would end up being toted around by the one ancient vampire with creepy red eyes that she‘d sworn never to speak to again.
All right, all right, so his eyes didn't bother her nearly as much as they had when Ashlyn had firs
t met Drake. And yeah, vermilion eyes were unspeakably cool by anyone's standards. But after dealing with Lord Angelo and the DEMON army, after saving Drake's life and then having him return the favor at least a couple of times, then having to watch him walk away…after everything, after everything, didn't she mean anything more than that to him?
Apparently not.
Ashlyn wasn't interested in excuses or qualifiers. After she'd resigned herself to the fact that Drake was simply a moron, suddenly all his other shortcomings became very obvious. Without the resist stane that he wore on a chain around his neck, sunlight was deadly to him, and he spent his free time brooding in a coffin. Plus, um, inherent need to drink blood? Major yuck factor.
He was not one of the four people sitting around the table when Ashlyn entered the kitchen. Vargo, Aaron, and two other Spartans were though, and it struck Ashlyn as surreal that her former enemies would be sharing breakfast in Restlyn’s kitchen. Ellis, the last Spartan whose name Ashlyn could remember, had not been present in the tavern the night before, but he was here this morning. Restlyn was at the stove, barefoot with a suspiciously clean apron over her clothes as she stirred oatmeal in a pot. Aik was lounging in the corner, an empty bowl in front of him.
There was the sound of a door slamming, and a few seconds later Skye came into the kitchen from a doorway beside the pantry. He had on a heavy leather coat with fur lining - reminiscent of the matching coats they had all purchased at the North Camp Inn so long ago.
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